


Ambush

by MillyVeil



Series: Ambush [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Blood Loss, Hurt Rodney McKay, Injury, Knife Wound, Mission Fic, Missions Gone Wrong, Shock, Worried John Sheppard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 18:38:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19978687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MillyVeil/pseuds/MillyVeil
Summary: "Jesus, McKay," Sheppard says as he crouches down next to Rodney. He wipes at his face with his sleeve. Water drips from his hair, his clothes. "If you wanted to get back to the gate so bad, all you had to do was say so."Rodney clamps down on the urge to punch him in the face. "Idid. Repeatedly."There's a dry, rustling sound as Renzie shakes out an emergency blanket. A moment later it's draped over Rodney."Really?" Sheppard tucks a corner of it under Rodney's shoulder, pats it like this is nothing out of the ordinary, like Rodney regularly lies in a puddle of his own blood, light years from medical attention and clean infirmary rooms and Carson's TLC. “I must have tuned you out."





	Ambush

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another SGA story I wrote well over a decade ago. Ack. I feel old now.
> 
> ETA: I just realized I recycled the name Renize (one of my OCs here) and re-used it for an OC in one of my Avengers stories (post-dating this by about ten years). My imagination is apparently limited when it comes to naming original characters. LOL!

Talking drops to a minimum as they start climbing up the tree-lined ridge, and soon the only sound heard is the wind chasing through the pine trees and an occasional boot slipping on the steep, stony trail.

Rodney lifts his eyes from the uneven ground to glare up at the low, ragged mist that swallows the treetops in its colorless embrace. He's done. He was done five hours ago. Done with the cold, done with the mud, done with the rain that has drizzled down over them in slow, depressing sheets ever since they stepped through the gate, and if Sheppard could just realize that this deadbeat planet is a waste of everyone's time, all of them would be so much better off. _So_ much better off.

Which is why Rodney has spent the past two hours lobbying for a strategic retreat to the gate. He bites down on a curse as he slips and goes down again. The pain in his knees and hands tells him he has managed to locate yet another patch of ragged stones under the layer of pine needles and leaves. "Pegasus – a great place to visit," he mutters under his breath as he uses a low-hanging branch to pull himself to his feet again.

Teyla, a few steps behind Sheppard, glances back over her shoulder and slows her steps.

Rodney wipes the dirt and grime off his hand on the front of his jacket as he starts up the trail again. "I mean, what's not to like about it?" he continues. "Great weather. Amazing medical coverage. And did I mention the wonderful friends you make? The Wraith. The Genii." He pauses to catch his breath. "Kavanagh."

Teyla cradles her P90 in the crook of one arm and brushes a strand of wet hair out of her eyes. "I do not know Dr. Kavanagh very well--"

"Lucky you," Renzie says dryly as he ducks past them.

"-- but I am certain he has some redeeming qualities." She motions for Rodney to follow Renzie. "Surely he would not have been chosen for the expedition otherwise?"

Rodney repositions the backpack on his shoulders and eyes the steep passage ahead. "He gives the bad guys someone else to shoot at?"

Teyla cants him a slightly disapproving look as he passes, but the quirk of her mouth betrays her and Rodney chooses to take that as an invitation to further share his thoughts of this damn planet.

He's halfway through his third round of explaining just how stupid this mission is (he's basically saying the same thing he did the previous two times, but the trick is making it sound like he's not, because it wouldn't do to get repetitive, now would it?) when Sheppard tenses up and comes to an abrupt stop in front of them. For a brief moment Rodney thinks he's about to get snapped at again, then something swooshes by his head and an ear-piercing choir of howls is unleashed on them from all around. He ducks instinctively.

Up front, Lorne's point man goes down like a felled tree.

Sheppard's shout to take cover carries over the rising clamor around them. Rodney doesn't quite know what's going on, but he's more than happy to comply. But even as he whirls around, he can feel his boots start to slip on the uneven, slick trail, and before he can reposition his feet they go out from under him. 

He twists awkwardly to keep from landing on the laptop on his back. He manages, but just barely, instead it's his left side that takes the brunt of the fall and the breath is forced out of his lungs from the impact. The air is suddenly heavy with the smell of rotting vegetation and wet dirt, and he hisses at the dull pain in his hip and shoulder as he rolls over and pushes up to his knees. Then Ronon is there, hauling him bodily to his feet.

"Teyla, take Renzie and get them out of here. We'll cover you," Sheppard shouts, and Ronon gives Rodney a sharp push down the trail in the direction of Parrish and Teyla. Rodney slips again, but this time somehow stays on his feet.

"You're staying? Are you _crazy_?" he shouts back.

" _Move!_ " Sheppard's voice doesn't allow for any arguments.

The trail is treacherous and slippery, and Rodney half-runs, half-slips down it, doing his best to keep his balance. He wonders briefly why things like this still surprise him, because it's always these kinds of missions that get you. The boring ones. The tedious ones. The uneventful ones.

That is until someone shows up and wants to kill you.

Rodney's the first to admit that he's maybe a little too eager to jump the gun on the whole death and doom thing, but during his time in Atlantis, he has slowly learned to react to unexpected situations with a little more initial calm and a little less initial panic than before. As Sheppard put it once, there's always time for panic later if it's warranted. This time, though, he's circumventing the initial calm, because if it's another thing he's learned, it's that people who are peaceful usually go to great lengths to make sure their intentions are not misinterpreted. Targeting unsuspecting travelers with big freaking rocks and screaming like banshees is _not_ the modus operandi of nice guys.

The undulating howling continues to echo all around them, rising and falling on the chilly air. Ahead of him, Teyla dodges another fist-sized rock. Parrish is a few steps behind her, and from the look of his muddy clothes, Rodney isn't the only one to have lost his footing at some point. Behind them, he can hear Renzie's heavy footfall. The man must be part Texan, part mountain goat, Rodney thinks, because he sounds as sure-footed as if he'd been jogging down the dry, even hallways of Atlantis.

Sheppard's sharp, urgent shout to watch out rings out, but Rodney doesn't know if it's aimed at the four of them, at Lorne or at Ronon, and he doesn't stop to find out, because there is movement in the undergrowth to their left. A moment later, Rodney narrowly avoids bowling both Teyla and Parrish over as the two skid to a halt ahead of him.

As if choreographed, the shrieking around them suddenly ceases, and the sound of their harsh, heavy breathing is all that is heard. Rodney fumbles with the strap that secures his gun. After the onslaught of sound, the lack of it ratchets up the tension in his nerves to almost painful levels. Silence after lots of noise in horror movies always means something really, _really_ bad is about to happen.

Four figures melt out of the shadowed vegetation just as Rodney manages to get the gun out.

"Do not come closer," Teyla orders over the sight of her weapon. The men carry no visible weapons, but their coarsely woven, dark-colored clothes are baggy enough to hide a smaller armory. "I will shoot," she warns and repositions her boots on the uneven ground for better balance.

Unarmed or not, these people just attacked them, and Rodney whole-heartedly agrees with her take on the situation. He finally manages to thumb the safety off his gun and tries to make up his mind about which of them to aim at.

"I'd listen to the lady if I were you," Rodney hears Renzie say, his drawl a threat as clear as any. Rodney dares a one-second glance over his shoulder. Renzie's facing back up the slope, aiming at the two men who somehow have crept up behind them.

As the groups stare at each other, Rodney is surprised to realize he recognizes a few of them. They're men from the village they encountered a few hours ago. The one with the houses on stilts. Despite the fact that the town elders had flat-out refused to discuss any kind of trading with the Atlantis team, they had looked a lot friendlier than the ragtag gang in front of them now.

"Why do you attack us?" Teyla demands. "We have done you no harm." She doesn't lower her weapon and her eyes are fixed on the man she apparently has singled out as the leader of the pack.

The man ignores her completely, his eyes pinning Rodney instead. Rodney just stares back, determined not to look away.

When it happens, it happens fast. In the corner of his eye he catches a glimpse of Renzie spinning around just as Rodney's vest is grabbed from behind. A vicious tug and before he knows it he's windmilling to keep his balance. Teyla shouts something, but her words are drowned out by Rodney's own startled protest.

In the end, there's no risk of falling, because he's pulled against a hard, sinewy body. But the relief is short-lived as an arm hooks over his throat, pressing hard, and something sharp and cold presses up under his chin. This is great, he thinks, a little hysterically. Just great. It’s not enough that they had to be stumbling around in the mud and the rain for hours on end. No, apparently fate decided a knife would be the perfect way to round up this day.

His wrist is grabbed and twisted out and back at an awkward, painful angle, and he obediently drops his gun.

"Don't you dare shoot," he croaks at Renzie, whose weapon is now pointed squarely at Rodney's head.

In Renzie's defense, he's probably aiming at the guy trying to hide behind Rodney, but the margins are far too small for Rodney to be comfortable with them, and really, it would be a criminal waste of his brain to have it splattered over the forest floor on this pathetic excuse for a planet if he were to twitch at the wrong moment.

"Let him go," Renzie says to the man behind Rodney, his eyes hard and narrowed behind the sight of the gun.

"Killing me is not very conducive to trade, you know," Rodney wheezes to the guy behind him.

Several of the strangers now have self-satisfied grins on their faces, and that is making him nervous. He tries to pull away from the blade under his chin, but breaking the viselike hold is like trying to dislocate a bulldog from a bone, and the man tightens his grip, forces Rodney's head back at a painful angle.

"Now," the man holding Rodney says close to his ear, "who said anything about trading?"

Hands reach around and Rodney feels his PDA and the life sign detector being liberated from the front of his tac vest. He hardly has time to react before his captor loosens his grip and the backpack is wrenched painfully from his shoulders. A shove sends him stumbling forward, and really, what the hell is up with all the pushing and shoving today?

He flinches at the hard crack of a P90 right next to him. The sound of the shot is almost a physical thing in its closeness, and for a confusing moment he's certain he's been shot, because his knees go watery beneath him. He sinks to the ground as the wave of cold sweat hits, prickling sickly under his skin as it wraps around him.

There's another shot, and more shouting from all sides. Rodney thinks he hears Teyla's lighter voice weave into the blanket of noise, but he's not sure. Heavy footsteps. Branches breaking. More yelling. More shooting. Hunching down on his knees in the mud, he wraps an arm over his head and doesn't move a millimeter out of fear of ending up in someone's line of fire. He just waits for the insanity to stop.

It seems to go on forever, but eventually, it stops.

"Are you hurt?" Rodney looks up just as Teyla crouches down in front of him. One man - the one who held the knife to Rodney's throat - lies on the ground a few feet from him. Rodney doesn't need Beckett's training to see that he's very dead. Behind Teyla, Parrish nervously flexes his fingers around his gun. He looks pale and scared.

"Can you stand?" Teyla asks when Rodney doesn't answer right away.

He's not sure he can, his legs still feel rubbery, but he nods anyway, his eyes still lingering on the man on the ground. Teyla slips her arm around his back and helps him to his feet.

A small avalanche of gravel and dirt comes hissing down the slope behind them. Lorne waves away the guns that turn his way and continues down towards them. Bachman is leaning heavily on him, and the blood that covers half his face gives him a savage appearance. Lorne tries to keep his P90 ready and at the same time keep them both from taking a nose dive. It's easier said than done, because Bachman's feet aren't really tracking the rocks and the slope, and more than once, Lorne almost goes down with him.

Renzie pushes past Teyla and Parrish and reaches for Rodney's arm. "Let me take a look."

Rodney ignores him. "Sheppard?" he asks Lorne and tries to stand up straighter. He bats irritably at Renzie's hands. "Where's Sheppard and Ronon?"

"They took off after them," Lorne answers, breathing heavily. He lowers Bachman down on the ground with a grunt.

"Oh, that's intelligent, leaving us here when we could be attacked again at any--"

Rodney's breath catches in his throat as Renzie does something to his arm that sends a lightning bolt of white hot pain up it. The searing words turn to dust on his tongue as he stares at the heavy trickle of red that drips from his curled fingers, turning the puddle next to his muddy boots a sick color. The cold sweat sweeps in again, and he hunches over, cradling his injured arm close to his body.

"Oh, God. You _did_ shoot me," he says, his voice high with disbelief. 

"It's not a gunshot wound," Renzie replies. "He had a knife."

"You okay?" Parrish asks nervously. He take a small, tentative step closer.

"Do I _look_ okay?" Rodney hisses through clenched teeth.

Renzie pries the arm away from Rodney's side again. A moment later the ripping sound of his knife cutting through the fabric of the sleeve is heard, and Rodney's mouth goes dry and sour. Parrish snaps out of his awareness altogether.

He keeps very still as the knife moves over the paleness of his skin. This is Renzie, he tries to remind the rational part of his brain. Renzie. Not Kolya. He does pretty well until the blade reveals the still fading scars on his forearm. He turns his head away sharply, swallowing the nausea that wants to rise.

"Do you need assistance?" Teyla asks.

Rodney turns his attention on her, grasping for any distraction he can find. Her eyes aren't on him, they're on Renzie, and she looks as grim as Rodney has ever seen her. She also looks a little like a drenched cat with her hair plastered to her skull, odd strands sticking up in strange angles. Her nose is a little red. Rodney’s pretty sure he looks the same, but he's sure Teyla pulls off the look much better than he. 

"I got it," Renzie says. "You secure the area." His hand closes around Rodney's good arm. "C'mon. Sit down before you fall over."

"I, uh...," Rodney mumbles eloquently. "Yeah."

He's thankful for the hands that help him sit down, because he feels stumbly and uncoordinated all of a sudden. There's no real pain yet, just the strangely buzzing numbness that followed the spike that went through him when Renzie did whatever it was he did, and that's just weird, because if the amount of blood is anything to go after, this is a little more than a nick. Until he'd seen the blood, he hadn't know he was hurt. How could he not notice it? How could he not have felt it when it happened? 

"They dropped this," Parrish says, and sets Rodney's backpack on the ground next to him.

Renzie shoves the pack back at Parrish. "Hold on to it a while longer," he orders.

"Careful!" Rodney says, and some of that irrational, paralyzing fear that the sight of Renzie’s knife brought to the surface fades. He reaches over with his good arm and pulls the pack closer, fully intent on checking his laptop. He didn't risk life and limb for it only to have it wrecked by idiots without proper respect for delicate equipment.

Renzie intercepts him. "That can wait," he says firmly and guides Rodney down until he's lying flat on his back.

The water immediately seeps through Rodney's clothes, soaks through to his skin, and within seconds he's shivering. As Renzie shrugs off his backpack and starts digging through it, Parrish steps in and lifts Rodney's head, slipping something under it. Standing up, the botanist takes a step back and crosses his arms tightly over his t-shirt, shoving his hands into his armpits. Rodney feels a little bad for snapping when he realizes what's folded up under his head, because Parrish looks like he's freezing cold already.

"Everyone okay over there?" Lorne calls out. He's kneeling in front of Bachman, unclipping the P90 from his teammate's vest. Bachman's palm is pressed to his forehead, but blood is seeping past his fingers and down over his face. He looks a little groggy when his eyes meet Rodney’s briefly over Lorne's shoulder.

"Soaked, but fully functional, Sir," Renzie reports without looking up.

"I am unhurt, but Dr. McKay is injured," Teyla answers. She lowers her P90 for a moment and tilts it sideways. Rodney recognizes the motion from the firing range; she's checking the number of rounds left in the magazine. What she sees is apparently satisfactory, because her eyes return to their focused roaming of the shadows around them.

“Parrish?” Lorne asks.

“I’m okay,” Parrish says, his voice still a little shaky. 

Another ripping sound is heard, and Rodney looks back at his arm before he can stop himself. Renzie is tearing a first aid pack open with his teeth. He raises Rodney's arm and presses the bandage against the skin right above his elbow, and Rodney's fingernails dig deep into the gravelly ground as the pain spikes again. This time, it doesn't fade.

"Sorry, Doc," Renzie says.

The razor edge of pain leaves Rodney shivering and miserable. Above him, Renzie reaches up and grabs Parrish by the front of his already wet shirt, pulls him down. Parrish stumbles a little, but kneels down and doesn't protest when Renzie takes his hand and places it on top of the rolled up bandaged that's already soaked through with Rodney’s blood. "Press here," he says. "Hard."

Parrish looks sick but complies, and despite the knobby roots and stones that are digging into his back, Rodney's glad he's lying down, because his vision goes a little dark around the edges when they shift their grips.

Parrish mumbles a distraught apology, but he doesn't let up.

"Can you feel this?" Renzie asks, and a short, blunt nail runs down Rodney's palm, drawing a line through the dirt and the blood.

"Yeah," Rodney breathes. He feels lightheaded. Nauseous.

"This?" The nail rakes lightly down each finger, waiting for Rodney's tense nod before continuing. “Wiggle your fingers for me,” he orders.

Rodney squeezes his eyes shut against the pain, but complies. There are more bandages, more pressure, but the blood continues to trickle warm and slick down Rodney's elevated arm. This isn't good, he thinks as he blinks up at the patch of colorless sky he can see between the treetops. He lies there and spends a full minute trying to remember what he read about brachial bleeding it, but it eludes him, lost in the white noise that is creeping ever closer.

Right about the same time he realizes that the hissing sound isn't coming from inside his head - it's the damn rain - it occurs to him that their attackers could come back and being flat on your back is not a good strategic position. In fact, it's a perfect get-yourself-killed position if he ever saw one. And to top it off, Sheppard and Ronon are still nowhere to be seen. He tries to sit up.

"Stay down," Renzie says and pushes him back down with disturbing ease.

"We should head back."

"And we will. Soon," Renzie agrees. He twists around on his knees and starts roaming through his pack again. "You two doin' okay there?" he calls out to Lorne and Bachman.

Bachman raises a hand over his team leader's shoulder. All's good, the gesture says. All's fine. Never mind the blood and the dead people. All's fine.

When Rodney looks up, Sheppard has somehow materialized next to him.

"Jesus, McKay," he says as he crouches down next to Rodney. He wipes at his face with his sleeve. Water is dripping from his hair, his clothes. "If you wanted to get back to the gate so bad, all you had to do was say so."

Rodney clamps down on the urge to punch him in the face. "I _did_. Repeatedly."

There's a dry, plastic sound as Renzie shakes out an emergency blanket. He drapes it over Rodney.

"Really?" Sheppard leans over and tucks a corner of it under Rodney's shoulder, pats it like this is nothing out of the ordinary, like Rodney regularly lies in a puddle of his own blood, a few light years from proper medical attention and clean infirmary rooms and Carson's TLC. “Must have tuned you out."

"This is all your fault," Rodney grinds out. “As usual.” He knows it's a ridiculous claim, Sheppard had nothing to do with this, but the words are a familiar, well-established pattern of normality that he's all too happy to cling to right now.

But Sheppard doesn't take the bait.

"Just relax. We'll have you back home in no time," he says instead, and Rodney suddenly sees that this is _nothing_ like the ordinary. This is Sheppard trying to cover up the fact that he's concerned, and that’s more frightening than the blood and Renzie's knife and the numbness that's starting to creep up through his body.

"I’d like to see how relaxed you'd be if you were the one lying here," Rodney growls, but his teeth are chattering, and the tone doesn't sound right. His _words_ don't sound right, but he doesn’t care, because he's scared-turned-angry, and the pain is making him dizzy, so he's allowed to be a little incoherent, okay? A little out of it. But then he thinks, maybe it's not the pain, maybe it’s the blood loss that's making the ground move lazily up and down? Or maybe it's the shock? Either way, the last thing he needs is for Sheppard to come and give stupid, _useless_ advice. He lets his head fall back and closes his eyes. He's not sure what he thinks he needs. To not be lying here flat on his back. To not feel like he's going to throw up any second. To not bleed out on some godforsaken planet with stones digging into his back and cold, dirty water soaking through his clothes.

The rustling sound of clothes tells him Sheppard is getting up. As the commanding officer Sheppard has a responsibility to both teams that are out here today, and Rodney knows that, he _gets_ that, but a selfish, petty part of him wants to reach out and grab Sheppard and hold him right there, pull him close enough to steal some of his warmth, because Rodney hasn't been this cold since that time in the leaking jumper when the freezing water kept rising and rising and he realized that he might just have signed his own death sentence when trying to get the drive pods on-line.

Despite the pressure of Parrish’s fingers, he feels blood run down his arm. He tries to latch onto that to remind himself that no, this is nothing like that. He’s not dying, because he’s not bleeding out, he’s _not_ , Carson will fix him up like new again. And it's not like he's never lost blood before, but truthfully, this looks kind of bad, he's bleeding too much, too fast, and they're too damn far from the gate, and--

He stops himself in mid-slide down to panic. It won't do anyone any good, he tells himself and tries to slow his breathing, but his chest remains tight, constricted, and it feels like he isn't getting enough air. He opens his eyes. He’s surprised to see that Sheppard is still there, looking down at him. Rodney manages a nod with his chin. _Go_ , he tries to say with the gesture. _Go take care of business_. He probably misses casual by a couple of kilometers, but it doesn't matter, because he knows Sheppard will do what needs to be done, no matter what. It's rule number one. Their priorities can't change. _Must_ not change.

Rodney had almost thrown his multimeter at Sheppard's thick head the day they’d sat down in Rodney's quarters and established those boundaries. Sure, Rodney might not be the pinnacle of refinement and socially accepted behavior all the time, but they both have a responsibility to everyone in the city, expedition members and Athosians alike, and that Sheppard had actually been concerned that Rodney would have a problem separating private from professional had stung.

Sheppard gives him a curt nod, then turns and motion Renzie with him as he walks away. The two men stop to confer with Ronon in a small, tight circle, just far enough that Rodney can’t hear them. Sheppard nods tersely at something Renzie says. Discussion. A couple of hand gestures. More discussion. At one point, all three of them look back towards him. Surprise, surprise. They're talking about him. How to get him back to the gate, probably.

 _Puddle jumper_ , he tries to mentally communicate to Sheppard, because the nausea that has settled in the pit of his stomach feels an awful lot like the motion sickness he suffered from as a child, and being carried back to the gate over Ronon's shoulder can only end in one very bad way. Just thinking about it makes his stomach turn

The others turn away, but Sheppard's eyes do what his fingers cannot – they linger on Rodney. _You'll be okay_ , they say.

When Sheppard finally does turn, Rodney drapes his good arm over his eyes and finds merciful semi-darkness behind it. He hears sounds of movement and talking around and above him, and he has to concentrate to keep listening, because the voices are starting to coalesce with the rustling rain, and it's hard to keep his brain from sorting them into the category of background noise.

Long minutes pass, and he suddenly realizes he's not so cold any longer. The flimsy blanket actually seems to work, and if it hadn't been for people shaking him all the damn time, and the lurching, blitzed-to-the-eyeballs motion of the ground under him, it actually wouldn't be so bad. Maybe he might even be able walk on his own if he rested a little.

He’s lying there thinking he should maybe say that to someone when his mind distantly registers a sudden, grinding sound, boots and gravel slipping against stone, then his consciousness shrinks like a high-speed optical shutter, narrowing and sharpening until his only point of reference is the white hot fire that consumes his arm again. He thinks he cries out.

Over the roaring in his ears he hears Sheppard's sharp "Careful!" overlapping Parrish's distressed "Sorry! I’m sorry, I slipped!"

Rodney tries to curl up on his side, wrap himself around the pain, but his body doesn't want to obey like it should, and that sends a spark of panic through the haze. Is paralysis a symptom of severe loss of blood? He tries to go back to the books he's read, tries to remember, but his mind doesn't want to cooperate anymore, and _God_ , what a completely useless way to die.

"Hang in, Rodney, we're soon there," Sheppard says from somewhere near Rodney's feet. He sounds out of breath.

Rodney forces his eyes open a fraction, because _of course_ he's hanging on, what the hell else is he supposed to do here? But he finds that speaking his mind takes too much effort right now, and he just blinks at Sheppard in a way he hopes conveys his annoyance. Sheppard presses his lips together and looks angry.

Rodney squints at their surroundings, but it takes a moment or five before things around him start making sense. The sick roiling of the ground, the sound of people breathing hard. He's on a stretcher. Sheppard and Lorne are carrying the foot end. He tilts his head back and catches a glimpse of Ronon and Renzie. No jumper then, he thinks, a little disappointed. But considering the alternatives, he's mostly okay with the mode of transportation.

Parrish is still holding his arm in a death grip, keeping it elevated and stumbling along by the side of the stretcher. Rodney tries not to think too hard about the way the bandage is more red than white. He attempts to bring his good hand up to his face, and this time he's got enough wits about him to realize why he can't. He's tied down. One strap runs on top of the blanket just above his knees, one runs across his midsection and good arm, another one runs over his chest. Not too tight, but enough to restrict his range of movement.

Oh. Okay. That explains _that_. Thank god. He lets his head fall back against the hard stretcher.

"C'mon, McKay," he hears Sheppard's voice again. "How many times do I need to remind you? No sleeping on the job."

No matter how annoying or how stupid his comments, Sheppard is the one to listen to when things go south off-world, that much Rodney has learned, so he does his best to obey, to keep blinking up at the washed-out sky and the trees passing above.

He wonders idly who's played around with the contrast settings, because the world has gone too sharp, too clean, and it seems to have lost at least one primary color. As a distraction to keep the fear at bay, he spends a few minutes trying to figure out which one, but eventually comes to the conclusion that it's too much work.

He then decides it doesn't matter, anyway. The rest of the colors are fading, too.

* * *

When Rodney surfaces again, it's not raining any more, and he's warm and dry and in no pain whatsoever. His eyes feel heavy and gritty, and he blinks slowly a few times to get them to focus like they should.

The lights are low, but there are islands of brightness around the softly beeping and blinking machines. The recovery room in Atlantis' infirmary, his mind tells him. It's a sad thing that he's been here enough times to know what it looks like, even half-conscious.

His head is resting to one side on the pillow, and he doesn't have to move a muscle to see Carson sitting next to him with a medical chart in is lap, adding a few notes in the circle of warm light from the lamp on the table.

The pen makes a last scratchy noise against the paper before Carson leans back in the chair, running both hands over his face. The gesture and the body language are heavy with fatigue. With a sigh, he glances at his watch, then at Rodney, who's trying to keep his eyes from falling shut again.

Carson's face goes from exhausted and concerned to exhausted and relieved. Putting the cap back on the pen and placing the file on top of the thick pile next to him, the doctor stands up and stretches like a cat – like a very big, stiff, Scottish cat. He groans and rubs his lower back gingerly.

"Hello Rodney. Welcome back," he says.

~ The End ~

**Author's Note:**

> I have two accompanying fics to this one, one in which Lorne takes care of his scientist afterwards (because I ship Lorne/Parrish SO hard!) and one in which an OC gets a glimpse of some John/Rodney interaction in the aftermath of this ordeal. I'll post them in the next few days.


End file.
